How long is a shot string at typical trap distances? Charles Askins said four feet. I thought it was more like 10-12 feet. How about this? Does anyone out there have slow-motion photos from an ammunition lab? Thank-you for any help on this question.

Ok - 60 inches, (5 feet) 80 inches (6 1/2 feet). It also matters what shot size you are using and the hardness of that shot.

I'm about to read back thru that article, thanks for posting it, but to say shot string doesn't matter in trap is an over simplification. The string will plow ahead on a straight away and add to the grind which qualifies as "matters". Andrew Jones dispelled a myth I held that the chips were smoked by the string since he found that the string has passed before the chips were spread.

But the tail of the string will certainly clip an angle target that you shoot a few feet in front of... How does that not matter? That is about the same advantage that shooting 1 1/8 over 1 oz. gives you.

If we assume an angle of incidence of 25 degrees between the path of the shot and the path of the target, and assume by the time the shot gets to the target, its speed has dropped to 900 fps, and the target's speed has dropped to 40 fps (from a starting speed of about 60 fps) we can show that the time it takes the 80 inch shot string to pass the target is about 0.007 seconds.

In that time, the target will have moved only about 4 inches along its path, but less than 2 inches towards the shot string.

Like I said, I'm not saying its impossible.

But I will say its highly improbable to happen very frequently.

If the pellets in the front of the pattern don't hit the target, by moving 2 inches towards the shot string, its not a good bet that any of the pellets in the back of the pattern are going to hit the target either. Maybe flyers. But of course, if we use good hard shot, there won't be many of those, right?

Here's another thing. How do you make the shot string longer or shorter? Are you sure you know how? And how do you test that? And even if you have that knowledge, how does it benefit you?

Since you kind of don't have much control over the length of the shot string, and under the vast majority of circumstances, you don't get any benefit from it, why worry about it?

SHOT STRING
“Stringing” of a Charge”
The “stringing of a charge” a subject that has been tested and studied and thought over at great length by all shooters and makers of guns and ammunition, had a unique and apparently successful test recently in England. Mr. Webster Watts, an English sportsman whose shooting ability has placed him in the front rank of English gunners, made the experiments at Brooklands track, the famous auto speedway, near London. Mr. Watts set out to discover whether the charge from a cartridge “strings” when fired at a moving object – that is, whether the last shots, or the slower traveling shots, go off in a sugar-loaf pattern. Mr. Watts used a big automobile (which ran at speeds of 30, 40, 50 and 60 miles an hour), the sides of which had a big iron target affixed thereto. At a range of 30 to 40 yards Mr. Watts fired, and no matter at what speed the car was traveling, there was not the slightest sign of stringing, in each instance the shots making practically a circle, the reason being that a shot from a gun travels at anything over 500 miles an hour, whereas a driven partridge never, or very rarely, exceeds 40 miles an hour.
[ SPORTING LIFE, May 7, 1910 ]